Lenin deposed in fossil facelift

Date: January 29 2013

Tania Branigan

ONCE he bestrode his world, lending his name to more museums, streets, monuments and public institutions than any other 20th-century figure. But in the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator, at least, it is goodbye Lenin, as a political dinosaur makes way for the real kind.

Mongolia is to transform a museum once dedicated to the Soviet dictator into a centre for its wealth of fossils, including a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus bataar specimen.

The grand building in Ulan Bator, which still boasts a giant bust of Vladimir Ilyich, has been used as offices for several years. The government has now earmarked the complex for a new dinosaur museum.

''Mongolia has been sending dinosaur exhibits abroad for 20 years, while not having a museum at home,'' said Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, the minister for culture, sports and tourism. ''We have a wonderful dinosaur heritage but people are not aware of it.''

She said that fossils lent to overseas institutions, and specimens smuggled abroad illegally, would fill several facilities if they were all brought home.

The centre will also be home to a new register for Mongolia's dinosaur finds, allowing proper tracking of discoveries.

The minister said she hoped that education via the museum and other new exhibits around the country would help turn people into protectors of Mongolia's heritage, and deter smuggling. The government also hopes to encourage tourism.

The Lenin Museum opened in 1980, when the country was a Soviet satellite. ''It was a very grand museum with Lenin's statue, everything embellished with red flags and with pictures of Lenin's childhood and history,'' said the minister.

She learnt more about Lenin when glasnost began and, like many of her compatriots, ''started thinking Lenin was not such a great figure and had caused so much misery to his own and other people''.

Since the transition to a multiparty democracy in 1990, the Mongolian People's Party has been based in the building, which has also housed a bar and restaurant; at one stage Lenin's bust gazed down over pool tables.

GUARDIAN

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